When his appearance had been changed, the photographer took more pictures for yet another pazport. From somewhere Irvine had obtained the real things and the services of an engraving artist and calligrapher to alter them to the new identity.

Monk spent hours with a huge map of Moscow, memorizing the city and its hundreds of new names—new to him, anyway. Maurice Thorez Quay, named after the dead French Communist leader, had reverted to its old name of Sofia Quay. All references to Marx, Engels, Lenin, Dzerzhinski, and the other Communist notables of their day had vanished.

He memorized the hundred most prominent buildings and their locations, how to use the new telephone system, and how to hail an instant taxi by waving down any driver anytime anywhere and offering him a dollar.

There was a screening room, where he sat for hours with a man from London, another Russian speaker but an Englishman, looking at faces, faces, and more faces.

There were books to read, Komarov’s speeches, Russian newspapers and magazines. Worst of all, there were private telephone numbers to memorize, figure perfect, until he had fifty of them stored away in his head. Figures had never been his forte.

Sir Nigel Irvine returned in the second week. He appeared tired but satisfied. He did not say where he had been. He brought something one of his team had purchased after scouring the antiques shops of London. Monk turned it over in his hands.

“How the hell did you know about this?” he asked.

“Never mind. My ears are long. Is it the same?”

“Identical. So far as I recall.”

“Well, it s

hould work then.”

He also brought a suitcase, created by a skilled craftsman. It would take an ace customs inspector to discern the inner compartment where Monk would conceal two files: the Black Manifesto in its original Russian, and the verification report that authenticated the manifesto, now translated into Russian.

By the second week Jason Monk was feeling fitter than he had in ten years. His muscles were hard and his stamina was improved, though he knew he would never match Ciaran and Mitch, who could march on hour after hour, through the barriers of pain and exhaustion into that limbo near death where only the will keeps the body moving.

Halfway through that week, George Sims arrived. He was about the same age as Monk and a former Warrant Officer (One) of the SAS Regiment. The following morning he took Monk out onto the lawn. Both men were dressed in track suits. He turned and addressed Monk from four yards.

“Now, sir,” he said in a lilting Scottish accent, “I would be most grateful if you would try and kill me.”

Monk raised an eyebrow.

“But dinna fash yoursel, for you’ll not succeed.”

He was right. Monk approached, feinted, and then lunged. The Highlands turned upside down and he found himself on his back.

“A wee bit slow to block me there,” said Sims.

Hector was in the kitchen depositing some fresh-dug carrots for lunch when Monk, upside down again, went past the window.

“What on earth are they doing?” he asked.

“Away with you,” said Mrs. McGee. “It’s just the young laird’s gentlemen friends enjoying themselves.”

Out in the woods, Sims introduced Monk to the Swiss-made Sig Sauer 9mm automatic.

“Thought you guys used the Browning thirteen-shot,” said Monk, hoping to demonstrate his inside knowledge.

“Used to, but that was years ago. Changed to this over ten years back. Now, you know the two-handed hold and the crouch, sir?”

Monk had had small arms training back at the Farm, Fort Peary in Virginia, when he was a trainee with the CIA. He had been at the top of his class, the inheritance of hunting with his dad in the Blue Ridge Mountains as a boy. But that too was a long time back.

The Scot set up a target of a crouching man, walked paces, turned, and blew five holes in the heart, took off the crouching figure’s left ear and creased his thigh. They used a hundred rounds twice a day for three days until finally Monk could put three out of five rounds into the face.

“That usually slows them up,” admitted Sims, in the tone of one who knew he would not get anything better.

“With luck I’ll never have to use one of these damn things,” said Monk.

“Aye, sir, that’s what they all say. Then the luck runs out. Best to know how, if you have to.”

Tags: Frederick Forsyth Thriller
Source: readsnovelonline.net